Young Giant

Seven-years-ago, a handful of visionary creative directors were in the midst of opening up the floodgates on a deluge that would forever transform the entertainment industry.

At the same time, a handful of visionary technologists were also in the midst of opening up the floodgates on a deluge that would forever transform the tech industry.

These two industries were about to collide to form the perfect storm. It was an unspoken and unlikely alliance that would dramatically reshape the world. Quiet deals were being made in shadowy places by a group of young troublemakers, misfits, dropouts and transients.

No one but those who were involved knew the revolution was happening, more importantly, knew it’d even happened. It always seemed so sad to me, those other lives without revolution that belonged to the wheel that never turned, and thus, never went up and over.

I was just a kid when I was fostered into the inner circle of giants. I stood alongside the creative directors on one side of the dam, each side intently looking across at the other, quietly waiting for the perfect moment to blow the fucker wide-open.

It was a crazy thing to be a part of, there was no other time like it and there’ll likely never be a time like it again. Strange times indeed, in just the right place and at just the right time, you could feel the first drops of rain falling on your face being forced sideways by a building wind. It was a tremendous and unparalleled force.

Just as we’d predicted, the reservoir had begun to swell, churn and spill over. Once the fuse had been lit, there was nothing that would stop the impending surge that would wipe out the dead expanse below. For better or worse, every-single-person on the planet was about to be changed.

This was the climate I grew up in. It was perfect imbalance to cause absolute chaos and we’d been the ones who’d lit the fuse. There was one rule during this tumultuous time, “Tight lip. Don’t slip.” It was because of that, I adopted the nom-de-guerre, Young Giant, to disassociate myself from it and to uphold the rule. It seemed an appropriate name, given what was done and the giants it was done with.

Even now, many years afterwards, I’m still torn and ripped apart by it. The things I’ve seen no one else should know and there’ll always be a large part of me that remains in the depths below the flood.

Sometimes in odd memories, I go back West, to that spot where together we’d scripted the plot, and with the right kind of eyes, you can still watch the last vibrant rays of the Californian sundown as they violently stab through shimmering waters to reveal the dusty bottom of what used to be nothing but a lifeless desert, in the years before the flood.